Driving Simulation of the Safety and Operation Performance at a Freeway Toll Plaza

Abstract

Toll plaza designs have implemented electronic toll collection and other technologies to improve toll systems; however, an increase in crashes has appeared with these improvements. To study safely the pertinent aspects of driver behavior in toll plazas with electronic toll collection, a cockpit driving simulator housed at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez was used. Specifically, in this study a comparison was made of two configurations of the signs that indicated the corresponding speed limit and toll station for each lane in the area before the toll plaza. One configuration corresponded to the current condition of the signage in Puerto Rico, with signs located at the roadside; the second configuration presented a proposed overhead signage treatment. A representative group of 20 subjects was selected to test the effectiveness of the two signage configurations on the approach zone leading to the toll plaza, calculating the standard deviation of roadway position, speed, and acceleration noise in five zones. The behavior of drivers using the proposed signage configuration appeared to be safer than the behavior of drivers following the current signage configuration. Specifically, at each of five zones in which behavior was sampled on the approach to the toll plaza, drivers using the proposed configuration changed lanes more smoothly and reduced their vehicles’ velocity more when approaching the toll plaza. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between configurations in acceleration noise. The results of this study provide strong evidence that driving simulators can be used effectively to identify efficient and inexpensive alternative signage configurations at toll plazas.

Comparative Analysis of Toll Plaza Safety Features in Puerto Rico and Massachusetts with a Driving Simulator

“…The methodology followed in this research is illustrated in Figure 2 and described below. A Latin square experimental design was used for each experiment to counterbalance the different possible configurations of treatments for the two toll plazas (14). The scenario layout varies between the two toll plaza experiments; the Caguas South Toll Plaza was divided in two configurations with 12 scenarios, whereas the West Springfield Toll Plaza experiment was divided in three configurations with 20 scenarios.…”

“…This design ensured that the order in which the participants were exposed to the simulation scenarios was counterbalanced across participants. Therefore, results obtained for each of the scenarios were independent from the order in which the participants ran the experiments (14). The experimental design established for the West Springfield Toll Plaza included five independent variables, for which 20 scenarios were chosen for analysis.…”

“…Configuration 1 consisted of roadside signage, providing the distance to the toll plaza and speed limits of each toll lane, whereas Configuration 2 includes the distance to the toll plaza with the addition of toll lane arrangement and the respective speed limits in an overhead design. The length of each zone was based on the MUTCD stipulated sight distance (1), which varies between 200 and 500 m. The rationale of the five zones delimited for the study was to evaluate how adequate the time allotted for the location of each sign was for subject drivers' response (14). Three independent variables were controlled for each virtual scenario, namely traffic flow condition, destination lane at the toll plaza, and starting lane position.…”

“…Transportation studies have been undertaken using driving simulators to understand the causes of crashes at toll plazas and to evaluate alternative treatments. For example, Valdés et al found that overhead signing configuration had a better potential for crash reduction than roadside signage when providing information to drivers indicating the appropriate lane use and posted speed limits (13,14). They did so by using a driving simulator to evaluate Puerto Rican drivers in a simulation of the Caguas South Toll Plaza in Puerto Rico, where drivers' speed, acceleration noise, and lateral position of the vehicle were studied in different zones of interest before the toll plaza.…”

Service levels of highway toll plazas: the influence of factors on manual customer service

“…Capacity can also be affected by human factors related to driver's and toll operator's characteristics (Valdes et al, 2016). The more human involvement in the toll payment process, the larger the vehicle service time shall be (Obelheiro et al, 2011).…”